A book to make you think
The hope and liberation you might be looking for
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Sometimes, you read a book that has the capacity to change your life entirely, and Siddhartha is one of them. Siddhartha is the story of a boy (who exists during the time of Buddha) who sets off on a pilgrimage to reach enlightenment.
His journey starts as Brahmin, but he quickly decides to leave his family to become a Samana, where he learns three essential skills: to think, wait, and fast. His journey continues into the forest, where he meets the Buddha and learns that nothing can be taught without learning it for oneself. The book starts to get interesting from here, where he takes his own journey instead of following the Buddha like many people around him. He falls in love and learns about women; he starts to work as a trader and encounters what greed and getting drunk feel like. Through the journey to happiness and enlightenment, he gets stuck in the money trap.
“Property, possessions, and riches had also finally ensnared him; they were no longer trifles of a game to him, and he had become a shackle and a burden”.
He loses all hope and all joy for life and gets stuck in the hamster wheel of just needing and wanting more. It’s interesting to think that many of us are on that hamster wheel without even realising it. It’s a life of no real meaning but just trying to acquire, acquire people or money, getting lost in the day-to-day anxieties and never really living in the moment. Disconnected from our hearts, it’s a place of pure fear. Siddharta has to pick himself up from this place, his lowest moment, and start over. He goes through the dark night of the soul. In many ways, he’s not started over at all because even though he loses himself, he continuously learns from the experiences. He discovers that in every experience and every time he’s lost himself and been dragged off track, no time has been wasted, and there’s no such thing as moving backwards.
“Things had been going in a downward spiral for him, and now he faced the world again void, naked and stupid. But he could not feel sad about this; instead, he even felt a great urge to laugh about himself and about this strange, foolish world.”
The last few chapters of this book are perfect. Nugget after nugget of beautiful wisdom about the world learned through nature and in moments of silence. Siddhartha becomes enlightened by truly living, going through profound loss and losing his way, only to find it again when he listens to his intuition and learns through nature. Although what he’s going through is entirely unrelatable, the author makes it relatable for anyone on a similar path.
The biggest lesson is that there are no wrong paths; each road brings you exactly where you’re supposed to be.
“My life has been wondrous indeed, he thought; it has taken wonderful detours.”
This book is the hope and liberation you might be looking for.
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